The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America"The explosive rise in the U.S. incarceration rate in the second half of the twentieth century, and the racial transformation of the prison population from mostly white at mid-century to sixty-five percent black and Latino in the present day, is a trend that cannot easily be ignored. Many believe that this shift began with the "tough on crime" policies advocated by Republicans and southern Democrats beginning in the late 1960s, which sought longer prison sentences, more frequent use of the death penalty, and the explicit or implicit targeting of politically marginalized people. In The First Civil Right, Naomi Murakawa inverts the conventional wisdom by arguing that the expansion of the federal carceral state-a system that disproportionately imprisons blacks and Latinos-was, in fact, rooted in the civil-rights liberalism of the 1940s and early 1960s, not in the period after. Murakawa traces the development of the modern American prison system through several presidencies, both Republican and Democrat. Responding to calls to end the lawlessness and violence against blacks at the state and local levels, the Truman administration expanded the scope of what was previously a weak federal system. Later administrations from Johnson to Clinton expanded the federal presence even more. Ironically, these steps laid the groundwork for the creation of the vast penal archipelago that now exists in the United States. What began as a liberal initiative to curb the mob violence and police brutality that had deprived racial minorities of their first civil right - physical safety - eventually evolved into the federal correctional system that now deprives them, in unjustly large numbers, of another important right: freedom. The First Civil Right is a groundbreaking analysis of root of the conflicts that lie at the intersection of race and the legal system in America." -- Publisher's description. |
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Contents
Protection from Lawless Racial Violence | 1 |
White Violence Black Criminality and the Ideological Fight for LawandOrder | 27 |
Modernizing Law Enforcement and Rehabilitating Criminal Sentencing | 69 |
Mandatory Minimums Community Policing and Death Penalty Bidding Wars | 113 |
Freedom from StateSanctioned Racial Violence | 148 |
Appendix Tables | 157 |
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administration African Americans amendment Anti-Drug Abuse Act arrests attorney Biden black criminality capital crimes capital punishment carceral Chicago child pornography Civil Rights Congress Clinton cocaine Committee on Civil Congress Congressional conservative convicted Court crack crime bill Crime Control crime policy criminal justice criminal justice system Criminal Law death penalty Death resulting Democratic Party discretion disparity drug enacted funding House imprisonment Johnson Judiciary Kennedy Kennedy’s Law Enforcement Assistance Law Review lawmakers legislation liberal law-and-order lynching mandatory minimums McCleskey Model Penal Code murder NAACP narcotics National Negro Nixon ofthe parole percent police brutality postwar President President’s Committee pris problem procedure proposals Public punitive racial justice racial liberalism racial violence racism rehabilitation Report Republican right to safety riots Safe Streets Act Secure These Rights Senator Sentencing Guidelines Sentencing Reform Act social southern Democrats tion Truman U.S. Sentencing Commission University Press USSC vote Washington white violence York
Bibliographic information
| Title | The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America Oxford studies in postwar American political development Studies in Postwar American Po |
| Author | Naomi Murakawa |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, 2014 |
| ISBN | 0199892806, 9780199892808 |
| Length | 260 pages |
| Subjects | › › Law / Civil Rights Political Science / Civil Rights Political Science / Political Ideologies / Conservatism & Liberalism |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |